After years of living in the shadows of the Golden Globes, Emmys, Academy Awards and hell, even the Razzies, West Side Story star Ariana DeBose has managed to accomplish a feat teams of overpaid PR consultants have only dreamed of — Making the BAFTAS somewhat relevant.


Advertisement

On Sunday, February 19, the actress made headlines after hitting the stage of London’s Royal Albert Hall with an opening act we neither needed *or* deserved in these trying times, performing a rap about women in the entertainment industry.


"Angela Bassett did the thing/ Viola Davis my Woman King/ Blanchett Cate you're a genius/ Jamie Lee you are all of us," she rapped during the performance one which sampled both “Sisters Are Doing It For Themselves" and "We Are Family.”




Garnering pained grins from pretty much everyone who wasn’t Jamie Lee Curtis, Cate Blanchett and Michelle Yeouh. It seems celebs (probably) contractually obligated to attend the awards show weren’t the only ones vastly confused at DeBose’s performance, a sentiment the fine people of Twitter conveyed loud and clear.




Alongside cementing her status as both a gay icon and a camp icon worthy of looking (alleged) Taylor Swift love interest Karlie Kloss right in the eye, DeBose’s ensemble garnered comparisons to rap god Kendall Roy, and requests for think pieces an array of reactions that prompted DeBose to flee the app (same, girl) and for BAFTAs producer Nick Bullen to speak out.





"That rap section in the middle, mentioning the women in the room, was because it's been a great year for women in film, and we wanted to celebrate that," he said per EW (a.k.a. The *very* grossly acronymed Entertainment Weekly).  “Here is a woman of color who is at the absolute top of her game. And she's opening the BAFTAs with a song that said so much on so many levels."


Bullen is right. It could have been worse — DeBose could have been Seth MacFarlane at the 2013 Oscars.